The Irish Potato Famine of 1845.

 

The Irish Potato Famine of 1845

What has become known as Potato famine of 1845 or the ‘Great Hunger’, was not the first time that people in Ireland had had faced starvation. Famine was a frequent visitor to Ireland. The famine of 1741, was reckoned to have killed an eighth of the Irish population and there were outbreaks of localized famine in 1800, 1817, 1822, 1831, 1835, 1842.  It's said that The 'Great Hunger' of 1845 onwards, killed around 1 million people and drove a further 1.5 million into emigration. Many of these died of disease in what became known as the coffin ships.

Some people refuse to call it a 'famine' because there was no shortage of food in Ireland at the time, which is true, and the country was exporting food while people starved to death. What the poor cottier was short of, was the money to buy the food. Cormac O' Grada, Professor of Economics at University College Dublin, says that exported food only amounted to one-seventh of the value of the potato crop that failed. He writes:

"Thus the 430,000 tons of grain exported in 1846/47, must be set against the shortfall of about 20 million tons of potatoes in those same years."

Although Irish food production would not have replaced the potato, had the food been retained in Ireland, for the use of starving people, and not exported, it would have greatly alleviated the suffering. The British government made Irish landlords responsible for poverty in Ireland, in spite of the fact that Ireland had been part of the Union since 1801. Making landlords liable for rates on land valued at less than £4 a year, led to clearances and evictions. Under the Gregory clause, the starving peasantry had to surrender any holding greater than a quarter of an acre in order to get relief. Under the Encumbered Estates Act of 1849, it was compulsory for land to be sold on the petition of either owner or creditor. This allowed speculators and Gombeen men to buy land for a fraction of its worth, when a tenant was in arrears with rent or a debt. But many tenant's were evicted at will.

Despite the fact that the British government did introduce relief measures by importing food and other relief measures - Peel without consulting colleagues or seeking approval from the Treasury, made £100,000 available for the secret purchase of Indian corn maize in America - they are accused of genocide. Yet, the government official Sir Edward Pine-Coffin, commandeered a warship, filled it with food and sent it around distressed areas of Ireland.

Many historians who have studied this subject, including Irish one's, dismiss the genocide theory. Indeed, at a time when Irish people were starving, many Irish farmers continued to export food to get the best prices for their products. However, the civil servant, Charles Trevelyan, who had considerable influence over Irish policy, believed that the way to counter the looming disaster in Ireland was to end relief and not to interfere in exports. He reversed Peel's policy on grain shipments and stopped the supply of food to Ireland. A devout Protestant, Trevelyan couldn't have cared less how many Irish people died. He wrote:

 "The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated...'  It was the Irish nationalist Protestant, John Mitchell, who said "God sent the blight, but the English created the Famine."